Cave Without a Name
HRDQ Research & Development Team

• Objective - To teach group-process skills
• Intended for - Intermediate or advanced teams
• Time required - 1½ hours
• Product Format - Survival Simulation

It was dark - really dark. Darker than you had ever experienced before. Not the ordinary night time dark where you can still see a faint outline of your hand immediately in front of your eyes. But the absolute blackness of black. There was a total absence of light, and that sent a nauseating little surge of panic into your gut.
  
Instinctively, members of the group reached out and found one another. The security afforded from the simple touch of others brought a temporary reduction to everyone's growing terror of being trapped in one of the unexplored passageways of the Cave Without a Name. Can your team survive with only its wits and 10 backpack items?

Introducing HRDQ's newest addition to its Team Adventure Series™ 

Designed to test the skills of intermediate to advanced teams, Cave Without a Name develops a full range of group-process skills including: consensus decision making and problem solving, conflict resolution, communication, team leadership, and synergy. This powerful, 2-dimensional simulation challenges groups to rank 4 action responses and 10 daypack items - first as individuals, and then as a team.
   

Use Cave Without a Name to:

• Provide teams with a non-threatening opportunity to work together.

• Allow teams to practice consensus decision making.

• Open or close a learning session.

• Observe group member competence.

• Illustrate the concept of group synergy.

The detailed Facilitator Guide features administrative guidelines, expert rationale, sample learning designs, overhead transparencies, and more.
     

• Objective - To identify and manage preferred conflict strategies

• Intended For - All organizational members

• Time Required - 1 hour

• Product Format - Instrument

• Participant booklet available in Spanish or English: $10 each Facilitator Guide: $84

  
Some people thrive on conflict; others shrink away from it. But no matter how we react, it’s important that we understand our conflict-related behavior — and learn to manage it more successfully.

The Conflict Strategies Inventory (CSI) gives participants valuable new insights into the strategies they use in conflict situations. Presented with 10 short cases of typical, work-related conflict, respondents choose the actions that are most like them.
    

The Conflict Strategies Preview Pack now includes the Mastering Conflict article!
   
The CSI measures 5 basic conflict strategies:

• Avoiding
• Smoothing
• Competing
• Compromising
• Integrating

Pressure-sensitive paper makes scoring quick and easy. The Participant Booklet also features an interpretive guide with recommended uses for each of the 5 strategies and descriptions of the behavioral cues that signal each approach. The Facilitator Guide includes theoretical background, pros and cons of each strategy, a sample training design, transparency masters, and more.
  
The CSI is particularly useful in management development and team-building activities prior to the introduction of specific conflict management skills.

• Objective - How to approach, manage, and resolve organizational conflict
• Intended For - All organizational members
• Product Format - Case Study
• Available in Spanish

Through the use of a realistic case study, Mastering Conflict walks readers through a collaborative, 3-step procedure for face-to-face conflict resolution. Broken down into "wrong way" and "right way" scenarios, the case study dramatically illustrates how each of the 3 phases might unfold in an actual conflict situation.
  
Too many people associate conflict with raised voices and slamming doors. That's because they don't know how to manage their disagreements. This article can teach anyone how to approach, manage, and resolve even the most sensitive organizational conflict.
  
Mastering Conflict 3-Step Procedure

1. Meeting preparation -
define goals and needs; identify all involved parties; choose the problem solving focus.
  
2. The conflict meeting -
share perceived issues and needs; set joint goals; develop an action plan.
   
3. Meeting follow-up - 
evaluate progress; mutually offer assistance.
  

 

The TeamLife Series

TeamConflict
HRDQ Research & Development Team

• Objective - To assess and improve group conflict behavior
• Intended For - Groups and teams at any stage of development
• Time Required - 2 hours
• Product Format - Instrument $10 each
• Facilitator Guide: $45

Team conflict is one outcome of team organization that is practically inevitable. When we consult with team-based organizations, one of the most frequent requests we receive is for help in dealing with team conflict. People see conflict as a barrier to productivity. We take the point of view, however, that team conflict is a potential promoter of productivity. The effects of team conflict are dependent on the way team members handle it. If team members can get a firm grasp of what behaviors turn conflict into a plus, they will be well on their way to using their diversity to their advantage.
  
TeamConflict is designed to give team members insights into how their behaviors determine the outcome of conflict and how they can change those behaviors to be more productive.
  
Development
  
Over the past few years, we have developed a series of tools designed to allow teams to fully discuss small slices of their life together. These tools have included topics such as communication, team roles, and accountability. Conflict within teams is another slice -- and it is a big one. We felt the need to produce a tool for discussing team conflict because it is an issue that continually surfaces in discussions with team members.
  
Our starting point was to question how team conflict differed from other types of conflict. We conducted a literature search on team conflict and found substantial differences. We then developed an instrument that reflected the most important aspects of handling team conflict. We ran several groups through several versions of the tool as it was refined. In addition, we asked customers who had teams in conflict to review TeamConflict for us. Their comments, in conjunction with the experiences of our groups, allowed us to produce the final version of TeamConflict.
  
Administering TeamConflict
 
Included in the instrument booklet is all the information needed for scoring, interpreting results, and preparing plans for change. It is possible, therefore, for a group of respondents to use these learning instruments without a professional facilitator. We do, however, strongly believe that a trained facilitator greatly enhances the learning experience for participants. Moreover, when exchange of feedback on a sensitive issue is part of the exercise, as it is in TeamConflict, a trained facilitator ensures that the process will be productive.
  

• Objective - To identify and understand
  a team's preferred conflict strategy

• Intended For - All levels of teams

• Time Required - 1 hour

• Product Format - Instrument $10.00

Don't let unresolved issues drain the productivity from your teams! The TCSI provides an ideal opportunity for teams to work through issues and learn how to handle future conflicts more productively.
  
Teams have preferred ways of handling conflict. Some teams avoid conflict at all costs, while others find that the battle gives them energy and motivation. Start your teams on a discussion of how they choose to handle conflict - and what impact their behavior is having on the success of their team - with the Team Conflict Strategies Inventory (TCSI).
  

The TCSI presents teams with 5 typical conflict scenarios. Administered in two phases, team members are first asked to predict individually how their team would handle each situation by ranking strategy alternatives. Then, the team as a whole comes together to try to reach consensus on the items. This approach allows individual team members to share their perceptions and come to conclusions about common strategies employed by the team. 
 
Teams will:

• Identify their preferred strategy for handling conflict.
• Gain an understanding of 5 different conflict strategies.
• Learn the appropriate use of each strategy.
• Develop procedures for managing disagreements.

The Participant Booklet includes pressure-sensitive scoring, descriptions of the five team conflict strategies, interpretation, and action planning. In addition to administrative guidelines and theoretical background, the detailed Facilitator Guide features a sample training design, a training activity with reproducible participant handouts, and overhead transparencies.
  
Overview
  
The learning goal for those completing the Team Conflict Strategies Inventory is to develop productive norms within their work groups for managing disagreements and to develop some procedures for dealing with more serious conflicts. The Team Conflict Strategies Inventory provides an ideal opportunity to work through any old, unresolved issues that may be draining energy from a team's efforts.
  
People cannot work together for very long without disagreements on goals, priorities, and alternative solutions to problems. This is especially true in teams where team members are dependent on one another to complete their work. Sometimes team disagreements can become serious conflicts, threatening the productivity or even the life of the group. But if a team can use effective strategies for handling conflict, it may actually afford new learning and eventually deeper, more productive relationships.

Whether conflict is positive or negative is dependent on how the team generally handles its conflicts. Teams develop characteristic ways of managing conflict, which we refer to as their conflict strategies. Each team tends to have one or two conflict strategies with which they are most comfortable. 

The Team Conflict Strategies Inventory Model

The Team Conflict Strategies Inventory is based on five strategies that can be described in terms of two stages:

• Integrating: Teams face their conflicts and disagreements. Conflicts are viewed as problems that need to be solved.
  

• Compromising: Teams find ways to meet each other halfway. No one needs to give up everything. Everyone gets something.
  

• Competing: Team members (and the leader) use rank, seniority, or other forms with leverage to suppress disagreements.
  

• Smoothing: Teams place group harmony and solidarity above everything. When disagreements arise, teams joke them away.
  

• Avoiding: Teams don't discuss their disagreements or conflicts. Teams pretend they don't exist and go on about their business.

In Stage 1, the parties realize that their goals are not compatible. A decision is made about how to handle the conflict. In Stage 2, the parties' goals are either met or unmet.

Team members can choose to confront the conflict head on or not. Non-confrontational approaches such as Avoiding and Smoothing do nothing to further the team's position in the conflict. If the team chooses to confront the conflict, team members may take this approach by Competing, Compromising, or Integrating. Each strategy has its positives and negatives. 

It should be noted that whatever strategy one party chooses, the other party to the conflict may or may not use the same strategy. We have focused the Team Conflict Strategies Inventory on the simplest situations in which one strategy prevails, in order to present the straightforward effects of each strategy.